Sunday, July 26, 2009

Two Icelandic Museums

Two museum visits so far and about time to start talking about them. The first was Vikingaheimar.

This is a new museum (opened this year) housing Íslendingur, a knarr built by folks here in Iceland and sailed over to L'anse Aux Meadows in 2000. The museum is a little sparse for content but that isn't surprising with the money situation in Iceland. -- For those who don't know the banking crisis hit this tiny country very hard, with the three biggest banks going belly up, and the British and Dutch governments holding the country hostage to get repaid for deposits by their people. -- The museum was completed and opened which is a big credit to the people who worked on bringing it about.

The museum itself is Well laid out with the largest hall housing the boat which is displayed to provide wonderful visibility into, and under, the boat. There are view areas on the second floor allowing visitors to look down on the main deck, and on the main floors to allow visitors to walk underneath it. There is significant content about the creation of the ship and its voyage which is wonderful to see.

The remaining rooms have reasonable content, the layout gives you time and space to examine the artefacts, a very nice mural and room to expand the collection as time and money allow. Plus - they allowed pictures and the lighting wasn't awful! This is an important thing in a museum in my opinion, made even better by the listing of artefact numbers with the text about the item allowing easy followup with the curatorial staff. The text had a good balance of overall context and some information about the particular artefact. It didn't go into all of the detail that I might want to see but then again, I am not the average visitor. The gift store had a reasonable collection of books, but the other content was a bit sparse. Overall, it's well worth the time and money to visit, likely even more so as the years pass if they continue to build the content.

Part of the mural showing the raid on Lindisfarne.

Three of the arrowheads in the exhibit along with their associated text.

Clearly having too much time on his hands, Thorgrimr carved a small norse figure completing it just before our last get together. Needless to say the timing of this and our trip was too much fun to pass up - so we decided to drag Snorri along with us.

Here we see Snorri posing on the top deck of the Islandingur. Worth noting as a future expansion is that the back end of the boat has four nice boxes in it. All of them were closed - a nice addition would be to open one and show some of what would be stored in it. As a second point, surely ONE of them could be carved to allow a nice game of tafl while sailing? I think it might also be nice to put out an oar or two to allow people to see them in relation to the size of the boat and benches.

Part of the top viewing area allowing you to step quite close to the top of the boat and see each part of it.

This museum is the likely first home of Eirik the Red's married life. It was occupied for only 10-20 years before he had to move on "due to some killings". The museum itself has a small staff shack, a set of washrooms, a half dozen full sized poster boards with the site history in four languages (Icelandic, English, German, and one of the Scandinavian languages). Just slightly uphill from the signs is the actual remains covered over again but with the wall outline shown as at L'anse Aux Meadows. A few yards off to one side is the reconstructed house where you find the two re-enactors.

These are the re-buried remains of the original longhouse. Surprisingly small actually (4x12 m).

Here we see Snorri about to enter the archaeological remains of the original house.

The loom in the reconstructed house. I'll leave it to Karen to go into details about the differences between this "Icelandic" style loom and the scandinavian looms. The staff did mention that they don't work on the loom anymore as they had a lot of difficulty with it - wonder why....

They also mentioned that the fire keeps things dry enough inside that they are getting some heavy checking on the wood pillars. They often boil water (over the propane fire) to help increase the humidity.

Karen grabbed this wonderful shot of my enjoying a story from the male staff member - funny we talked for a long time about a range of topics, I left each of them with a DARC card but none of us thought to introduce ourselves by name (or ask the other's name) - the things that don't occur to you until later... We will have to follow up by email with them later. In any case their presentation is entirely in third person story telling. They talk through the story of Eirik and Leif, birth, exile, new lands, all of it. There are only a very few staff members working now (a shame). The hall is fairly nice, and like the houses at L'anse Aux Meadows it cuts out the outside wind noise perfectly. It is, however, very heavily equipped. Multiple spears, a sword, multiple axes, many shields, sheepskins everywhere, bric a brac tucked in every corner, lots of clothes on the walls.

A bellows (not right for viking age unless they know something we don't) and an example of the equipment load - that is 4 frypans on the wall - riches!

Some of the many weapons around the house.

A closeup of the jewelry of the female interpreter (get the NAMES next time!). Being interested in beads, this was especially of interest to me. The middle strand she called out as a gift from a bead maker (extremely modern styles), the other two strands have a mix of the good and the bad. I'm not sure about the broaches, lovely work but they are cut-outs without a solid backing. Like a two piece broach without the underlying piece. Must look into this to see if any finds match that.

And just for fun the nice lady posed with Snorri allowing the costume types a look at her outfit. (nice fox as a scarf)

Overall, most definitely worth the time and money to visit. The folks there are quite knowledgeable about the history involved but not as much about the artefacts and they don't seem to be as active in the research. This is more of an acting arrangement.

Friday, June 6, 2008

Museums in Denmark

(repeated from Hammered Out Bits )I had quite differing experiences with the various museums I saw in Denmark:

There were three museums I visited that were basically 'old school' styled presentations: objects in cases, extremely limited labels, objects generally grouped by type. The lighting varied, but generally was reduced general illumination, with use of some spot lighting in the cases. Some idea of light levels can be gathered by the quality of the images. (I have some experience with longer 'hand held' exposures, so the clarity and shift in colour will give some indication of the relative amount of light available.) None of the museums I visited had any staff visible inside the collections themselves (admittedly I was there 'off season', but I also spent several hours at each museum).

The National Museum in Copenhagen had its 'pre-history' gallery closed. For them anything before 1000 AD is lumped together. This new presentation includes virtually ALL the Viking Age materials. It was originally scheduled for opening on May 1, but later delayed to May 17.The Medieval galleries are very clearly old style. The concentration there was on church related pieces, many larger. The stress appeared to be more to 'treasures' rather than everyday objects. Labels were basic: Object / Location / Date - in English and Danish. Sometimes a line or two of context or more detailed description. No registration numbers (very rarely these were visible on the object itself). If there were a group of like objects (commonly grouped by type) they would share the same three lines and have no further method of identifying them. ('Early Medieval Axes' for a group of a half dozen, obviously mixed construction and combat types) This would make any attempt to get more detailed information from the collection viewing almost impossible. You were not normally allowed to take photographs, and there were no detailed 'guide to the collection' type books available. (Separate topic discussing those.) The gift shop was large with an excellent selection of books ranging from popular overviews to quite detailed archaeological reports.

(Group of Early Medieval Axes)

The Roskilde Museum is actually a complex of related buildings and presentations, each with a different theme. I spent my time at the 'History of Roskilde' collection. The building housing the historic collections was originally a warehouse and factory from the mid 1700's, so there are a large number of small rooms with theme groupings. The objects generally were grouped by find location. Again labels very short (and here only in Danish) with Object / Find / Date. The individual pieces were more usually identified by case number, but again registration numbers were not visible. I'm not as sure here what the policy on photography may have been, as I was introduced to the collection by curator Jens Ulriksen. The gift shop was a small display in the lobby, with limited books available, few in English.

(Group of Blacksmith's tools)

The Ribe Viking Museum focuses quite clearly on two aspects of the history of Ribe, with the main thrust of the collection centred on the Viking Age. About the same floor space is dedicated to Medieval, Renaissance, Early Modern objects (with most stress on the earlier materials). Both the building and the presentation itself are more modern, and it shows in the display layout and methods. This unfortunately includes the use of dramatic spot lighting in rooms with a generally quite reduced light level (to the determent of possible photography). One excellent feature of the presentation was a full scale diorama of a section of the Viking Age market. This put a large number of the artifacts in a working context (and included a huge number of other pieces not represented in the collection.) I think officially there was not supposed to be photography, but I did see any number of general visitors taking photos. The gift shop was again large and had a fairly good selection of books, but here there was more space given to gift items. Popular works were generally available in English, unfortunately most of the research volumes in Danish only.

(Glass Working Display)

(Metalworking in the Viking Market scene)

My visit to the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde suffered from a major renovation and my own focus on research of ship building tools. The room normally containing the supporting artifacts was closed, with a new exhibit documenting the recent production of the replica 'Sea Stallion' being installed. Labels were available in Danish and English, with usually a short paragraph of detail. One detail I did like was the working tools in the boat yard area (all replicas of course) were hung in public view. Each had Find / Museum / Registration number. The main ship hall has the preserved remains of a number of the ships on display, backed by detailed scale models for comparison. This hall has a large wall of north facing glass, so photography was simplified (and permitted). There was also a room with walk on reconstructions of two of the ships (primarily intended as a children's activity room. Much of the complex is given over to the docks, the boat construction yard - with the large number of replica ships and boats floating and in use. As outdoor areas, the photography is excellent, outside of the restricted viewing angles. (see an earlier post for ship images). The gift shop here had a very good selection of both popular and research titles, many available in several languages. Most of the detailed research volumes were related to ships (unsurprisingly), but many of those only in Danish.

(Working Tools - some of the axes)

(Children's area with full scale dressed replicas)

Generally I found all the museum collections I visited had greatly reduced information available to the viewer. In many cases only the barest description was provided 'bunch of axes' being typical. Sometimes the objects were not even given enough description to provide real understanding, for example 'spindle whirls' does not inform you about just what those pieces are. With no registration numbers, it would prove very difficult for the research minded to gather detailed information. Rarely were objects placed in any kind of working context. The collections were almost all presented in a formal and static style (Victorian Cabinet of Curiosities). The Viking Ship Museum was the primary exception, but it blurs the line between artifact collection and an experimental archaeology presentation (which in fact are in two distinctive areas of the complex).

I also spent two afternoons at the Ribe Viking Centre, a living history styled presentation. As this museum was not officially open at the time, and also represents an entirely different type of display style, I will leave a discussion of it for another entry.

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Viking Ships at Roskilde

Today is smelter prep / workshop day for DARC, against our upcoming spring smelt on June 14. So I wanted to get my presentation version of my Denmark images sorted out and transfered over to DVD. At this point I have taken the various panoramic images I shot and patched them together. As a bit of a break from my concentration on iron smelting here, I have posted a couple of images from the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde.View of the interior - Note that the ship is tied to the dock on the STARBOARD side.View of the hull at the waterline on the port sideThe first are two views of the 'Ottar', a reconstruction of Skuldelv 1. This is a knorr (knarr over here), an ocean going freight vessel. The original was built in Sognefjorden Norway. This is the hull that Paul Compton's 'Viking Saga' is based on.The specifics from my notes:length - 16.5 mwidth - 4.5 mcapacity - 20 tons / 35 cubic metersdraft (laden) - 1.3 msail speed - 12.5 knotts (empty?)construction - Denmark, circa 1030View of the interior, this ship tied 'to port'.The last I am pretty sure is the reconstruction of Skuldelv 6. This is a medium sized coastal working ship for fishing or trade. There were a number of boats at the museum dock on this basic pattern These are obviously the work horses of the sailing programs there.The specifics (from the text):length - 11.2 mwidth - 2.5 mcapacity - 3 tonsconstruction - Norway, circa 1030

I got more detailed in my notes with the other museums I visited. I had wandered over the dock area before the museum opened in the morning to take these images. My main focus at the Viking Ship Museum was actually on construction and especially working tools. (This related to an ongoing project for Parks Canada to produce a complete set of Viking Age ship building tools.)

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Viking Sites in Orkney

Just in the order we visited them...

The Orkneyinga Saga Centre and Earl's Bu are outside Orphir Church. Link to all three here.

A fun place with a building (pictured) containing 8 panels discussing the location and its connection to the Orkneyinga Saga. I think the best part is that the panels are pictures and laser printed text pasted onto boards, with hand drawn titles. Someone cared enough to work on this. There is also a 17 minute film playing when you want. Outside is the ruins of the Earl's Bu and an old partial church. But the church was built later then the Viking Age.

The Brough of Birsay. The Brough is on a tidal island so seeing it is dependant on low tide. And it was fantastic! Lots of the remainders of a Norse settlement. Similar to L'Anse aux Meadows but on the slanted side of an island. Lots of different house layouts. Again there is a later period church.

Maeshowe was next on the list. The guide was absolutely delightful and really brought the place to life. No pictures were allowed inside the tomb but the Viking graffiti was right there, right in front of us. Not in a barely discernable scratch but in clear lines that were readily readable. There's a book that we bought that has great photographic plates of every last one of the 41 runic inscriptions found. it's called "The Runic Inscriptions of Maeshowe, Orkney" and it's written by Michael P. Barnes.

The guide's pronunciation of the english translation of the runes (and in one case Old Norse) in a Yorkshire accent was pretty funny. Don't go here if you're claustrophobiac - the entrance walkway is 10m (30 feet) long and only 1m (3 feet) high. The chamber itself is tiny, and deeply inside a hill.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

National Museum of Scotland

Remember, our esteemed leader went to Denmark, Neil and Karen went to Scotland and Iceland. We'll both be posting - don't get confused. Driving on the left is bad enough.

We went in here around 12:30pm and emerged 4 and a half hours later with 650 photos at closing time. :) We'll share those some other day.

These broaches were found at Ballinaby, Scotland. That's all the information the display had.

It's actually frustrating - no artefact number, nothing. Getting more info about some of the fun stuff - like a glass tesserae found at the Brough of Birsay is going to be tricky.

And the displays didn't exactly suit photography, some of the exhibits - like the robots - seemed designed to make photos impossible.

This is a great interactive exhibit for the kids - Dress up like Vikings! I'm squatting quite low because the dress is sized for kids. There had several interesting ideas for teaching kids.

This is a display of a reconstructed viking grave. Its nice to see details like that at a museum rather than just a static display of an artefact in a case. Still the Peterborough museum's artefacts in action was even better.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

COPENHAGEN - field report

My guess is I've shot about 600 images or so...

The National Museum was less impressive in terms of the collection that was available. The Medieval and Renaissance gallery is a lot of church related stuff. There was a section on daily life and the trades, but the artifacts from my period of interest were quite limited. In Denmark, the Viking Age is considered part of the Ancient history area. May have something to do with the country considering itself the 'oldest monarchy in the world'. I guess they figure they beat out the UK by a few years. So its more like 'before kings' or 'after kings'.They do hold the majority of the materials from Greenland. Most of which had been yanked for an upcomg special display. All the textiles were gone. Sorry.I still did manage to take at least 50 images. Everyone will get sick of axes! I did ramble through the later materials taking shots of stuff that would interest many of my other artist friends. One of the big surprises was a collection of objects (admittedly small) from a Danish attempt to find the North West Passage - in around ** 1650 **. Three of them actually made it back after a winter on the ice (Remember that is what killed Franklin's much better equipped expedition the better part of 200 years later.)

There has also been a bit of interesting forged iron around Copenhagen as well as the stuff in the National Museum. I'd guess most of it from the 1700's. At one point the city was obviously equipped with gas street lights. Many of the hangers are distinctive. There are any number of old sign hangers around as well. The area of Copenhagen within walking distance is composed of older buildings, plus the palace, govenment and large warehouses from when this was a major shipping power.

A piece of intelligence - forget the free bicycles. Oh, there were lots of them being pushed around all right. They have these distinctive solid plastic disk wheels (in place of spokes). Built in city maps of the downtown tourist areas too. But did I see any place to pick one up? Not until the very end of most of an afternoon hoofing it around. One lone (loan) bike chained to a stand - about three blocks from my billet. You put in a 20 DK coin (about $4) which you get refunded at the place you chain it back up again - assuming you can FIND the place you chain it up. Might as well not even be available. Supposed to be something like 2000 of them, and I only saw ONE not already spoken for. This is the off season too.

Monday, May 5, 2008

Neil and Karen go to Iceland

Made a quick stop in the home country on our way to Scotland to pick up a few things...

The quality of the cooking has gone downhill since we were last home.

The Viking Village doesn't have a good reputation for it's authenticity. Fortunately for Neil, it only does dinners and we couldn't stay around that day. Maybe on the way back through Iceland at the end of May. I happen to enjoy schtick quite a bit. :)

Found this bit of Viking inspired art in the middle of a roundabout in Njarðvík. Well, at least the sword is Viking inspired, even if sticking it in a stone isn't. ;)

Now, this on the other hand, has some history. It's a Viking boat called the Islendingur, which is based on .... well heck, I took a picture of the text too.

Friday, April 25, 2008

ROSKILDE - Some Images

This morning I took a stab at trying to get some images off my camera (now my equipment bag is here and I have the cables) and converted through the computer at my billet and up on the blog here.

VIKING SHIP MUSEUMThis is the woman I mentioned who is working on the sail weaving project. She is here packing a line of weft with her sword beatter. Got some interesting advice on the correct way to make one of these. She also had a number of samples of cloth using various threads that they had made up as test samples. (The thread weights are in my head...)This is an overview of the activity room. The Knorr hull is to the left, the longship to the right, with the weaving station to the rear. The hull replicas are full scale.

ROSKILDE MUSEUMThis is the woman's grave described in the last post. Clearly 'killed' as we had learned about from Neil Price. Very interesting. (See what happens to women that get too uppity...) A series of glass bead strands. The text stated 'from a number of graves', but that description applied to the entire case, and there were also a number of smaller clusters of beads. (And yes Neil [Peterson, of DARC- ed.], the other groupings were closer to 15 beads each.) Not sure if this grouping had been seen in other catalogues. This is the drop spindle with wool yarn. Sorry that the image is not the sharpest. The image was taken hand held at about 1-15 second exposure.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

ROSKILDE - the Roskilde Museum

As I mentioned on the last posting, the Viking Ship Museum has no artifacts, other than the ships themselves.

The main artifact collections are housed at the Roskilde Museum. The institution is more of a complex spread around the core of town (kind of like the Smithsonian on a smaller scale). I spent most of Wednesday in the 'historic' collection. This is housed in a set of interlocking buildings dating roughly to the mid 1700's.

I obviously spent hours with the Viking Age and Medieval materials. Here in Denmark, they seem to divide things into 'Early History' and then 'Medieval', with the break at 1000 AD. This messes me up anyway, since it cuts across what I would be looking at for the Viking Age. Our perspectives in North America are shaped with the English experiences: 450 for the end of the Romans, 500-800 for the Saxon invasions, 800 -1066 for the Viking Age, 1066 and on for the Normans.

It turns out the early Viking Age history of Roskilde is a bit vague, and not well represented in the artifact record. The earliest references to Roskilde run from roughly 1030 - 1050. The earlier settlement remains have never been found. For this reason, there were few objects in the museum from the core part of the Viking Age. From this late Viking Age period, through the Middle Ages, Roskilde served as and important centre for trade, political and religious power. The Catholic Church established a number of buildings here, centered mainly on the tall hill that dominates the area.(Note, I expand on the description of Roskilde town on todays 'Hammered Out Bits' posting)

All this taken into account, the Viking Age materials represented a the Roskilde Museum amount to maybe 200 artifacts. I took photographs of almost everything, with notes mainly on dates and my own observations. The descriptive texts were quite limited (and of course in Danish, which I can't read anyway).There were no reconstructions or even images of the objects in use. This is a short coming of the museum, as without context, objects mean less to the average viewer. Objects were most often grouped by type, not necessarily detailed in date or find location. The lables did not contain the object registration numbers. This would make attempting to identify individual pieces for latter reference a challenge.

I had contacted museum currator Jens Ulriksen ahead about my visit, and he kindly too some time to introduce me to the VA collections.

Most interesting of all (for me) was a grave grouping from about 800 AD. A female buried with a spear, the body laid over with three massive stones. (Does this sound familure?) Combined with a male, legs crossed (bound) arms thought to have been bound to the sides - with the neck broken. I recognized this right off from the work of Neil Price, who some of us met at Haffenreffer a couple of years back. Very cool!

There was also a very nice pattern welded sword, in extremely good condition. Two cores, I think I counted 9 or 10 layers to the rods. Although not dated (other than Viking Age) I would guess early. It was only 65 cm of blade and quite wide, about 8 cm.

Upstairs in the Medieval section were also a number of pieces that were 'late Viking Age' - from roughly 1050 to 1100.The huge score here was a fragment of woolen textile. I did my best to get a clear close up shop (through the glass and in the dark). Again no details, save a date at 1100. Looked like wool, my estimate was about 10 -12 threads per cm. There were seveal groupings of spindle whirls, plus one complete spindle (original wood shaft) which also had its wool yarn (no date).There was also a large collection of leather shoes, easily 15 or 20, mainly from 1300 -1400. There was a single (flat) sample dated to 1100. The types were mostly turn shoes, several with centre seams (like the Yorvik style).A reasonable amount of small iron objects. Several groupings of glass beads. Four complete sewing shears (Meghan will be keen on those images - the objects here show I was correct about the thickness of the spring sections.)

I did chat a fair amount with the only staff member working in the building. This was curious in itself (we did talk funding and cut backs, the universal problem). The age of the building means that it was a series of smaller rooms linked together, most of them about modern living room size. The materials were grouped by theme. It was presented more as a Victorian styled 'stuff' museum. With only one person to mind admissions, there was no provision for interactive presentations. This balanced by the low activity. Remember that this was a weekday morning, and really off season at that. Even still, over the five hours I was there, I saw five other people plus one school group. The kids were maybe grade 4, and spent about 20 minutes with the VA exhibit and were gone. (This involved in some kind of 'pick and object and then draw it' project. And yes, I was too asked to interpret the collection for the kids, but of course could not lecture in Danish - Neil)

I must admit that we have been spoiled by the last couple of large international exhibits we have worked on!

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

ROSKILDE - Viking Ship Museum

This is the first in what is hopefully a series of field reports from Denmark. (Sorry if some of the charaters used seem odd - this is being typed from a Danish version keyboard.)

The first thing about the Viking Ship Museum - its ALL about Ships. Just ships. The complex is basically in four parts. Only the main 'Viking Ship Hall' appears to require admission. I had a comp anyway, so I'm not even sure if there was any cost. In the main building are four sections: the boat hall - an activity room - gift shop - temporary exhibits.

The boat hall has the ships. These are mounted on the steel frames that you have certainly seen photos of. I found the fames a bit of a pain. These do outline the hulls as they would have been when complete. They also cover over some of the detials on the joints, as the metal supports the timbers at both top and bottom. this is less a problem with Skuldeleve 1 (the ocean knorr). This is the hull that Paul Comptons 'Viking Saga' is based on.The ships comprise the only artifacts on display in the museum.

In many ways the activity room was the most interesting. There are mock ups that you can climb into, the decks of Skuldeleve 1 and also number 2, the warship. The kids gravitate to the warship hull, which is larger inside and has shields and costumes to try on. The knorr deck is smaller (of course) but the cargo area is outfitted with a duplicate of the Mastermyr chest, the metalwork from Oseberg, a low tent cover over barrels and buckets. Some of these are open showing a cargo of glass work, pottery, grains. A very nice presentation over all.Of most interest to our gang, there was a woman in this area working away on a WW loom. She is involved in a project to research production of a wool sail. I talked to her for about an hour, made a page of notes and shot a number of close in shots of her set up. Got some insight from her about weaving sails and some idea of the ongoing experiment. (Should I write this up here, or wait for a set piece lecture later...)

The outside areas make up the majority of the complex. There is a smallish building that houses the archaeological preservation lab, but it was closed (not staffed, or I would have tried to talk my way in).There is a large dock area containing something like 20 or so various reconstructed boats. These range from a small one log duggout to the Ottar (based on number 1). Number 1 and number 3 (the coastal trader) are completely outfitted for sailing.There are a number of various other Scandinavian VA boats reproduced as well. A very complete overview of lapstrake ships up to the early 1900's.

The last part of the complex is the working boat yard. This is a building roughly the size of the Wareham workshop, divided into two larger spaces plus offices and storage. A lot of work also goes on outside. Here was a large peg board arrangement with all the replica tools. They basically have copies of every known VA woodworking tool, thankfully for me each was labled with source, date and artifact number. (As these are replicas, I will be able to check back to the original artifacts for details.)My pre-contact effort paid off best here. I was allowed to handle and record the tools. For the axes, I just made direct tracings of the profiles, as well as scaled photos. (Mind you, my normal inch-cm scale is also in the missing bag, so I had to use a cheap tape measure.) Again, I will leave the details to a later time or posting. The main thing of note was that their comparison of working these tools against the tool marks shows all the ships found at Roskilde were constructed using standard axes and then finished with planes. They also found that the small spoon bits for rivet holes need to be worked with a bow drill.